In a culimination of a long series of posts here on Gauntlet.ca, we can now make it official.

Check out this story at the CBC. It's not alone, it's just the most stark example of this problem I've seen recently.The liberals are at 32.6, the Conservatives are at 34.8. The difference is 2.2. Both of those numbers have a +/- of 1.7%. Which means the Liberals are between 30.9 and 34.3, 19 times out of 20. The Conservatives are between 33.1 and 36.5, 19 times out of 20.

Joe Anglin, leader of the Green Party, says that he doesn't think the Green Party is going to be able to avoid deregistration by Elections Alberta unless they decide to overlook the fact that they can't submit their audited financial statements for last year.Seriously.  This is dismal.

The official opposition of the wealthiest province of one of the wealthiest nations in the world cannot afford to hire someone to answer the phones.Daveberta reports that the last two employees of the Alberta Liberal Party have received layoff notices.

Tiny Perfect Blog brought my attention to a story in the Calgary Herald about this group of people trying to start a new political party. Maybe.[Update: Check the comments for TPB's take...]

OK, here's what I'm getting from this story:

• The Alberta Progressive Conservatives said that they would release information about who was using the government's planes.
• April 2004: They failed to do so.
• June 2004: Charles Rusnell with the Edmonton Journal filed a Freedom of Information Request for the flight log

So the news is that David Swann won the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party on the first ballot yesterday. Congratulations to David and his supporters.

It's official.As the National Executive notes, the convention will go on as planned.  We are just in the weird situation where due to forces outside of our control, the Liberal Party was called upon to unite around a leader faster than our leadership selection process would have allowed.  But because of Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc's selfless actions, the Liberal Party has been able to do that and respect the rules of its constitution at the same time.